A Shadow Falls
by Kitchyy
Summary: Jack/Daniel, Onesided Jack/Sam. Sam heard a shuffling, scrabbling sound in a room not too far ahead and she tensed, mentally cursing herself for not packing her beretta like she should have.


The Jack/Daniel chemistry for the episode The Light was too intense to ignore. This begged to be written. warnings for Onesided Sam/Jack and accidental voyeurism.

Spoilers for Season 4: The Light

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><p>P4X-347 wasn't too bad a place, all things considered. No goa'uld threat circling their heads, plentiful food in the form of MRE's, wild fruit trees and berry bushes not far from the palace, fishing for the Colonel - as long as he didn't stay out too long - and supplies sent from SGC to keep Sam, Daniel, O'Neill and Lorne pleasantly occupied.<p>

That's what Sam told herself: Not Too Bad. But not too good, either. It was boring as all hell, to tell the truth. It had been a week since they were quarantined here and her first estimated timeline saying they could get out of here within two weeks had been reassessed to a month.

It seemed such a long time. There were so many things she could be doing instead of sitting here detoxing from alien drugs. Like working with Dr. Lee to finish building their first naqada generator, assisting with new troops with what they need to look for when coming through the 'gate, or finishing the brakes on her bike. Instead she was stuck here, of all places. Beautiful as it was, it was still a prison and if the 'stupid piece of shit drug machine' as the Colonel put it, was turned down too quickly they all felt the withdrawal. None of them handled that well.

Sam tried to make a good spin on things. The majority of the days spent at the palace were good, if a little boring. During the day she, the Colonel and Daniel would spend time together. Sometimes playing cards or chess, other times trading jokes or talking idly to pass the time. Sometimes Teal'c would show up and keep them apprised of life at the SGC, from mission reports to the juicy gossip of their peers. Other times they spent their days alone, working solidly through the long hours on some project or another, or catching up on work.

And every night all four of them went to their respective rooms to while away the night time hours.

Sam was never that good at sleeping through silence. When sleeping on base - which happened more than she admitted out loud - there were the comforting noises of soldiers and civilians going from place to place, the muffled, quiet, half-heard murmur of people talking along the corridors. When she slept at home there was the hum of the fridge, the incessant click-click-clang of her old baseboard heaters in the winter months, or the sound of a far off vehicle passing by. But here it was silent and the void of noise kept her awake and filled her ears until the silence became a living thing. Teasing her with the possibility of sleep, but kept just out of her reach.

She had originally chosen a room that faced the ocean so she could hear the hush of the waves, but the nights were colder there and she always woke up a little bit damp. So, here she was in a silent room far from the white noise of the waves and the words surrounded her. Every wall in every room gold words ran from floor to ceiling. It was enough to make her dizzy, telling her things she couldn't understand.

She asked Daniel to translate her room for her once, but after a few minutes of hearing Goa'uld garbage about gods and living forever and 'if you serve me eternal bliss will be yours' crap, she had told Daniel to stop.

Then she thought about requesting a can of paint from the General the next time he asked what supplies they needed.

Maybe it was a symptom of slight withdrawal from the device, she thought idly, picking away at a few ideas on her laptop late one night. The urge of wanting to do something real and useful itched under her skin and the frustration of doing nothing drove her slowly insane.

And as always there was the silence.

She had taken to wandering the halls of the palace in the night when sleep was elusive. At first glance every room looked alike: four walls filled with writing, black obsidian-like pillars holding up the roof with yet more gold writing filling the blank space of an unfurnished room. Only the placement of the windows was different. Some had moonlight spilling through slatted boards. Some were fully in shade, and some had strange half-light peeking through, like the window itself was unsure where it stood.

Maybe that's what made Sam get up and wander the halls tonight. The closed in silence or the words glowing gold in the moonlit darkness, or because just yesterday it was notch-it-down day and her skin itched and her mood was restless. Maybe it was a mix of all of them put together.

The want and need to do _something_ crawled under her skin.

So she went through rooms again, filing each away by location, size and possible use. She stayed away from Daniel's, O'Neill's, and Lorne's chosen rooms. No one needed to deal with her insomnia but herself.

Tonight she walked a much less explored area of the palace. It was one of the farthest areas from the light room, just on the edge of the drug's influence. She slid her hands along a wall and wondered about who wrote the words. When had it been done, and did they know the gods they wrote them for were parasites? Did they have doubts, like Teal'c, and like her? Had they prayed at night in this palace hoping one day to be free?

Perhaps it was the thoughts of the Goa'uld swirling through her head, or the thought of someone else being here that made her uneasy. Sam heard a shuffling, scrabbling sound in a room not too far ahead and she tensed, mentally cursing herself for not packing her beretta like she should have. She thought of heading back to her room to retrieve it, but brushed the thought off. First, she would see if there was any actual danger.

Sam crept to the doorway. There was a gentle whisper of fabric and a choked gasp. Sam's heart rate skyrocketed and adrenalin spiked. There were people in this room. If the goa'uld had found them here and gotten a hold of Daniel or the Colonel, or even Lorne they were in serious trouble.

Like almost all the rooms in the palace the room didn't have a door, and Sam silently moved to the opening and peeked through.

She was suddenly very glad she hadn't brought her sidearm because she was certain she would have dropped it.

Two men lay at the back of the room on top of two sleeping pallets pushed together, and although she couldn't see their faces because yet another pillar blocked her view from their necks up, she had been through too much and known these men too long to not recognize the body of one Dr. Daniel Jackson and her CO, Colonel Jack O'Neill.

It wasn't that they were together that surprised her. There had been countless missions where SG-1 had been squished into confined spaces. She had been as uncomfortably pressed against Teal'c's hulking frame as many times as O'Neill, as Daniel, too, but it was how they were that made her mouth drop.

Daniel lay on his back with one knee drawn up, a bare foot resting flat on the floor and his hands slid over the Colonel's bare arms. O'Neill was almost on top of him, one elbow braced by the floor and the other where Sam couldn't see. By the trajectory of his hand she would bet money it was stroking gently through Daniel's hair. The whisper of fabric must have been from when O'Neill l took off his shirt, and when Daniel slid his hand up a tanned, sturdy shoulder and down to pluck O'Neill's nipple, Sam heard another similar gasp as before.

"I thought I was gonna lose you," O'Neill said, a bare whisper that had Sam straining to hear.

"But you didn't," Daniel replied, and pulled him closer. Their bodies pressed closer, and O'Neill's leg wedged between Daniel's.

Sam swallowed thickly, her eyes glued to the scene before her. She felt dizzy with realization that her CO was touching a man. Not just any man, but Daniel fucking Jackson. She had thought all members of the team had similar relationships with each other, as in the non-romantic kind. She never realized until now how very wrong she was. She felt numb with shock and some hopeful and closely guarded emotion held tightly in check curled into a ball and dropped into the bottomless hole her stomach had become.

How could she have been so foolish? How could she have not seen this coming? She had thought the O'Neill and her –perhaps in time could've had a chance. Sam had held onto that, let those little embers of hope fan to life.

O'Neill peeled off Daniel's black tee-shirt, and when he lay back down, O'Neill splayed wide, long fingers over Daniel's flat white belly; caressing his skin and making him writhe and push up against that large hand. There was a low moan, too low to make out who it came from, and Daniel grabbed the Colonel's wrist and pulled it lower, over his clothed cock. He thrust up hard.

There was another guttural moan, this one unmistakably O'Neill's.

An unexpected shiver of heat ran down Sam's spine. She should go. This was a private moment never meant for her. At least Sam knew she could head back to her temporary quarters and lick her wounds in peace, because they were definitely not going anywhere tonight. But her feet felt glued to the spot.

It was so damn painful seeing O'Neill -_Jack_- Her mind supplied, with that guilty-warm thrill she always felt when she called him that in her mind, with Daniel. And yet... _And yet,_ it was beautiful, too. She had eyes in her head, and she knew how beautiful the men on her team were. Sam had gotten enough jealous glances and snide off hand remarks from other female SGC members to make her infamous around the base.

Jack started unbuckling Daniel's belt with military efficiency and opened up his pants. Daniel lifted his hips and olive green BDU's slid down muscled thighs streaked silver in the moonlight.

_Oh God, Jack's gonna do it. He's gonna wrap his hand around- and then he's gonna-_

Another thing she would feel foolish for until the end of her days: she had no idea these men liked each other. She knew Daniel had once been with a man, a late night drunken confession when Sam had teased him about being a prude. It shocked her at the time but in the end had brought them closer for it. But the Colonel? She felt blindsided, hit by a bus going 50k down the highway, because she never would have guessed he would have the inclination for this.

Daniel hissed and arched into Jack's hand, now curling around his flushed cock. "I could feel myself dying, and I couldn't do anything, couldn't say anything. All I wanted was you, and I couldn't get the fucking words out."

"Shhh, I know, Daniel," Jack crooned, barely a murmur.

Daniel swallowed so loudly Sam could hear it. He reached down and stilled Jack's hand. "You don't." He sounded near tears, and Sam's throat tightened in sympathy. "I was going to die and if you hadn't brought me here... You would never know how I... t-that I lov-"

"Don't do this," Jack pleaded.

"Why not?"

"It'll change things. That word always does."

It had gone much farther than she had ever thought, and Sam's eyes suddenly prickled with the hot flood of unshed tears. This wasn't a one time romp in a palace. This was deeper than that. The change between them had been so subtle; she hadn't even noticed they were falling for each other. Sam had been too busy with work, discovery and her own cooked up fantasies of someday that she hadn't seen what must have been flashing in front of her like a strobe light all along. Had Teal'c known? Was she the only member of the team left out of this development? Humiliation heated her cheeks and made her fingernails dig into the dark wood of the door frame.

But the tears were a double edged sword. As much as she hurt, she hurt _for_ them. For Daniel's cracking confession and Jack's pleading denial.

"I don't care, Jack. You need to know," Daniel whispered.

She could hear Jack sigh. "I already do. You never needed to say it because I know. Damn it, _I Know."_ There was a long pause. Sam could see their hands moving somewhere near their faces, and then Jack whispered harshly: "Daniel, oh _God_-"

And then they were kissing so deeply it looked like they were trying to climb into each other and stay there for the rest of eternity, kept safe inside each other like Teal'c carries his symbiote, hidden safe away from the prying eyes of the world.

Shame gnawed at her. Sam's head bowed and she turned to leave.

Sam heard more buckles and the rustle of fabric. Like watching a slow motion train wreck, her eyes snapped up and she watched with a kind of detached fascination, shame and curiosity as both men kicked off the rest of their clothes.

Sam was many things, but innocent wasn't one of them. She realized how wrong she was. Heat bloomed low in her gut, she could feel the hardened peaks of her nipples rubbing against the fabric of her grey tank, and hot wetness slicked her inner thighs as Jack slid on top of the good doctor, grabbed both their cocks and started pumping hard and fast and tight.

Sam had assumed from off-color jokes and the few times airmen teased each other for fun or to embarrass that one man was always 'the woman' and one always 'the man', but this was different. Both were men, both masculine and had hard, long bodies, shaven chins and low, pleasured moans; and most definitely, neither of them was 'the woman'.

Daniel surged upwards, pumping himself through Jack's hand, keeping up with the relentless pace. Both of them still looked like close wasn't close enough, and Daniel's hands slid down Jack's back, dislodging his dog tags from the dip between his shoulder blades. They tinked loudly as they fell, landing with a hollow thump on Daniel's chest.

Daniel's hand kept sliding down, down, scratching blunt nails down skin until they found Jack's hips and ass, growled a sound that stalled the breath in Sam's throat, and guided Jack's hips until they were both thrusting.

Jack made a tiny sound, like a reed bending to breaking point in the face of heavy wind, or a tree branch snapping under too much pressure, and cried out Daniel's name.

"Do it, Jack. Come for me."

Sam's mouth fell open, her eyes went wide and watched, stunned into speechlessness as Jack's body seized up, every muscle taut as a tripwire. The world seemed to teeter at that moment, breath stopped and hearts caught in that in place between the first beat and the second.

Then it rushed inexorably onward in a rush. Jack spasmed over, and over onto Daniel, over his cock and belly and around his own hand. Jack kept making dry, sobbing sounds, and Sam was sure if she could see his face right now it would be lost in sweetest bliss. Head tipped back; face flushed, mouth open, forehead crinkled and eyes sightless. Or maybe not, Sam thought. Maybe he would be looking at Daniel, burning a hole into him with eyes so intense they bordered on frightening.

For just an instant she hated that Daniel got to see it.

Daniel slid his hand to join Jack's, and it didn't take much longer for Daniel to come, back arched, crying out something too muffled to make out. His body shuddered as if in convulsions and when he finally let go of their spent cocks both men shook with tremors.

It was too much. She had to leave. Any more time spent there and they would be able to hear her labored breathing, see her wide, dilated eyes reflecting everything she felt. And she would have been able to see the same in them. Too vulnerable. Too exposed.

_Too much_.

She ran blindly and silently through gold and black pillared corridors, not caring where she went. Sam felt raw, bruised and wrung out. Caged. Imprisoned. Restless.

Sam threw herself into a room far from Daniel and the Colonel, and yes, from here on in it would be the Colonel. Not Jack. The withdrawal itch was layered in want, and grew to a fever pitch that sang in her ears and made her throat dry. Her skin felt tight and the restlessness licked at her skin from the inside. She knew what this feeling was, and squeezed her eyes shut, slid down the wall and slipped her hand inside her BDU's.

It didn't take long. All she had to do was close her eyes, and the vision of the Colonel laying over Daniel, fisting their lengths together and the wet sound of hot skin sliding on skin and the low grunts from both of them. Those thoughts had her biting her fist just to keep quiet as she spasmed around her fingers buried deep inside her.

When she came back to herself some time later, the light from the solitary window was starting to lighten. She pushed herself into a sitting position and wiped wetness from her cheeks, refusing to acknowledge if it was sweat or tears. It didn't matter, either way. What was done was done.

She stood slowly, found her way to her room again, and fell dreamlessly to the welcoming arms of silent oblivion.

The next morning everything seemed normal, and it was. If The Colonel brought coffee over to Daniel, and Daniel teased him for it she pretended not to notice, and if Sam talked a little less, the guys didn't say anything. If they noticed something was wrong, she could blame it on notch-it-down day and leave it at that.

It killed her a little bit inside, but she wouldn't take their happiness from them.


End file.
